We all live in our own bubble with like-minded friends and familiar work colleagues – COVID lockdowns and travel restrictions have probably made the bubble tighter. But how can we market to Australians if we don’t know who they are beyond our bubble?
The release of the 2021 Census data this week is timely, providing a reality check of what our contemporary Australia looks like.
From recognising Pride Month and celebrating Lunar New Year to commemorating NAIDOC Week, our industry is all over inclusion. So, what does the 2021 Census tell us about Australian consumers? And what are the implications for marketers?
Diversity. Too big to ignore.
Australia is now a predominantly migrant country with more than half (51.5%) of the 25.5m population born overseas or have at least one parent born overseas. If your business is marketing to all Australians, then you need to communicate to Australians from a migrant background.
We are more linguistically diverse than ever, with more than 5.5m people speaking a language other than English at home –almost 800,000 more than the previous Census. Of these, around 800,000 do not speak English well, so your most engaging and hilarious TVC won’t be cutting though.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander populations are bigger than ever before, with more than 812,000 people, an increase of 25% over the previous Census. Indigenous Australians now account for 3.2% of the Australian population.
Multiculturalism. A valuable thing.
Refugees and asylum seekers dominate media headlines and shape our image of this audience. The reality is very different. Australia’s immigration policy over the past couple of decades have prioritised skilled and business migrants.
Migrants of today typically buy a car within 12 months of arrival, a house with 3 to 4 years and an investment property by year 5 according to SBS’s Calling Australia Home, a research report looking at the settlement journey of new migrants.
Nielsen’s Ethnic-Australian Consumer Report found migrant-Australian FMCG expenditure is growing at a faster rate than Australian-born expenditure. The report predicts migrant-Australians’ spend will grow at a faster rate than their Australian-born counterparts, accounting for over $4.4 billion in incremental revenue. This will result in the migrant-Australian shopper contributing a total of $18.7 billion (or 28%) of the total FMCG retail channel.
Get competitive. Get there first.
Over 1 million migrants settled in Australia between the 2016 and 2021 Censuses. That figure would have been higher if it wasn’t for COVID – about 80% of these arrivals were before the pandemic.
This is almost one million instant consumers who have had to buy clothing, home goods, mobile phones, cars and homes. Contrast this with the natural growth rate, you’ll be waiting decades before babies born today will become affluent consumers.
Get there first if you want to get first mover advantage. Brand awareness and loyalty haven’t been built. New migrants don’t yet know the difference between Commbank, ANZ or ING. They haven’t yet developed a preference between Coles, Woolies or Aldi.
Multicultural media is also less cluttered so building your brand or retail message more cost effectively. It allows challenger brands to act like the ‘big boys’.
Migrants, particularly those with limited English proficiency have a lower churn rate. When we arrived from Vietnam as refugees over four decades ago, the Commonwealth Bank was owned by the Australian Government. We had to open an account with the Commbank to receive our social services payment. Today, Cabramatta, a Vietnamese community hub, has one of the busiest Commbank branches in Australia with 9 ATMs – not bad for a suburb of just over 21,000 people.
Get there early and you’ll reap the rewards in the short and long term.
Talking to diverse audiences. It’s easier than you think.
Some communities are highly concentrated making media targeting highly effective and cost efficient. In NSW, seven in 10 people in the Fairfield local government area speak a language other than English at home, half of the residents in Burwood (NSW) have Chinese ancestry.
This concentration is perfect for geo-targeted digital or OOH media and makes it easier to measure a campaigns success if you can track sales by location.
Don’t go into it with blind faith.
We are now less religious than ever. While still significantly the most common religion in Australia, for the first time, fewer than half (44%) of Australians identified as Christian. Almost 40% of the population said they had no religion and increase of 10% over previous Census.
Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism are the next largest religious affiliations. Marketers will need to consider the trend away from Christian beliefs and values when developing creative. Religious diversity also comes with greater opportunities, Diwali and Ramadan are already starting to emerge as retail occasions in Australia.
Thang Ngo is a strategist at Identity Communications, Australia’s largest multicultural marketing agency – an IPG Mediabrands company. Twitter @thangngo.
The largest and longest-running Chinese language newspaper in Australia, Sing Tao Daily went into liquidation on Thursday, ending its 38-year legacy and adding uncertainty to the diversity and independence of the Chinese- language media in the country.
The sudden closure of the local publication that formed part of 16 overseas editions of Hong Kong’s second-largest Chinese-language newspaper comes as Australia’s largest non-English language community is overwhelmingly embracing digital media, including popular social media platform WeChat.
With a circulation of more than 15,300 for weekdays and 25,000 for the Saturday paper nationally, according to Dentsu Aegis, Sing Tao had also been facing criticism globally for being influenced by the Chinese Communist Party.
An ASIC notice confirmed the liquidation of Sing Tao News papers Pty Ltd, while the global group described the move as part of its business adjustment to adapt to the operational environment, adding they also planned to boost other overseas businesses.
More than 20 staff in its only remaining office in Sydney were reportedly left in shock when they turned up to work late last week, with many concerned about their unpaid benefits as they were told the liquidation process would probably take up to three months.
“Sing Tao is not just any other publication; it’s an icon in the local multicultural media landscape,” said Thang Ngo, managing director of Australia’s leading multicultural marketing agency, Identity Communications.
“The loss of Sing Tao and other local Chinese-language publications will significantly reduce the diversity of media available to the community here.”
Mr Ngo said the number of paid Chinese publications was down to fewer than 35, from almost 90 a decade ago.
Sing Tao is the second Chinese newspaper in Australia that has stopped printing in six months. In September, another daily Chinese paper, Australian New Express Daily, owned by Chinese-Australian billionaire Chau Chak Wing, scrapped its print edition.
“The general Chinese media landscape is worse off because of the loss of the paper, but I’m not surprised,” said UTS professor of media and cultural studies, Wanning Sun.
“Sing Tao has undergone many changes in terms of style, readership and business model, and also in its editorial positions,” she added.
“There have been challenges for two reasons: the decline of Cantonese-speaking older generation of migrants in Australia; and, at the same time, the rapid growth of a Mandarin-speaking younger audience.”
A survey of 522 Mandarin-speaking Australians conducted by Professor Sun and her team found as many as 60 per cent of respondents identified WeChat as their primary source of news.
It also found that while most Chinese-Australian participants did not regularly access news and information from mainland Chinese legacy media, a “strikingly similar” proportion regularly accessed mainstream English-language media.
SunRice and Identity Communications, the multicultural communications division of IPG Mediabrands, have won the Business Campaign of the Year at the 2019 NSW Premier’s Multicultural Communications Awards presented in Sydney this week.
The NSW Premier’s Multicultural Communications Awards (PMCAs) recognise excellence in the multicultural media and marketing industry. The PMCAs acknowledge the valuable contribution multicultural media and marketing plays in our society by helping people connect to their culture, identity and language. The awards also recognise the important roles played by journalists, editors and publishers in print, radio, television and digital media.
The campaign challenged stereotypes because it didn’t feature the usual cultural icons of red, gold and ‘8’. Instead, SunRice the Rice Breaker, depicted a Chinese-Australian family sharing a meal with their local Australian neighbours. Inclusion was a key message – as a rice brand that is universally appealing, SunRice is able to connect people of different cultures over great food.
The Rice Breaker resonated with migrant audience because it acknowledged that they also want to be successful in Australia and engage with the community – 66% of people who saw the creative said they would consider SunRice for their next rice purchase; it drove an 86% increase in SunRice followers on WeChat. SunRice also recorded a significant uplift in orders from retail partners.
Says Andrew Jeffrey, head of marketing, SunRice: “SunRice is thrilled our campaign has been recognised with this award. The outstanding results demonstrate the crucial importance of audience insights in building authentic engagement with our Asian-Australian customers. The audience insight that Identity Communications brought to the table was invaluable.”
Says Thang Ngo, managing director, Identity Communication: “From day one, SunRice told us they wanted to build an authentic connection with Australia’s Asian community. The client recognised the importance of developing a robust strategy and bespoke creative.”
Client: SunRice Head of Marketing & Insights: Andrew Jeffrey Senior Marketing Manager: Shannon Cumberlidge Brand Manager: Peta Thomas, Jeddah Ryan
Agency: Identity Communications Managing Director: Thang Ngo Creative Director: Yasmin Quemard Art Director: Rachel Liang Writers: Yasmin Quemard, Brenda Leung and Sean Zhu Translation Management: Brenda Leung, Albert Han Designer: Rachel Liang Head of Strategy: Thang Ngo Client Services Director: Angelica Naranjo Production Coordinator: Murray Wallace Lead Developer: Dipak Sadaula Production Company: Clockwork Film Media: Havas Media
SunRice and Identity, a division of IPG Mediabrands, have won the Business Campaign of the Year at the 2019 NSW Premier’s Multicultural Communications Awards.
The campaign challenged stereotypes because it didn’t feature the usual cultural icons of red, gold and ‘8’.
Instead, SunRice the Rice Breaker, depicted a Chinese-Australian family sharing a meal with their local Australian neighbours.
Inclusion was a key message – as a rice brand that is universally appealing, SunRice is able to connect people of different cultures over great food.
“SunRice is thrilled our campaign has been recognised with this award,” says Andrew Jeffrey, SunRice head of marketing.
“The outstanding results demonstrate the crucial importance of audience insights in building authentic engagement with our Asian-Australian customers. The audience insight that Identity Communications brought to the table was invaluable.”
Thang Ngo, managing director at Identity: “From day one, SunRice told us they wanted to build an authentic connection with Australia’s Asian community. The client recognised the importance of developing a robust strategy and bespoke creative.”
Other winning marketing campaigns at the NSW Premier’s Multicultural Communications Awards:
Agency Campaign of the Year: Cultural Perspectives – Your Vote Will Help Shape Australia
Voting is a right for all Australians but enrolling, assessing candidates and casting a ballot is a challenge for people with low English language-speaking proficiency. The Your Vote Will Help Shape Australia campaign by Cultural Perspectives aimed to make voting easier and support increased participation by sharing voting information in 30 different languages across print, radio, and online.
AFL NSW/ACT Community Campaign of the Year – Hindu Council of Australia – Deepavali Fair Aiming to increase Deepavali Fair attendance by 10% to 30,000, the Hindu Council advertised on Hindi satellite television channels, in Indian language newspapers, via social media and through flyers and banners around local schools and major intersections. As well as meeting attendance targets, the Council successfully increased sponsorship revenue by 15%.
Other winners of the 2019 Premier’s Multicultural Communications Awards:
Best Audio Report: Manpreet Kaur Singh, Shamsher Kainth, Avneet Arora and Maya Jamieson – SBS Punjabi Best Audio-Visual Report: Andrea Booth – NITV, The Point Best Print Report: Zia Ahmad – AMUST Young Journalist of the Year: Xinrui (Rena) Li – Sydney Today Best Use of Digital or Social Media: Sirine Demachkie and Kinderling Kids Radio – Mother Tongue Public Interest Award: Avani Dias – triple j Hack Alan Knight Student Award: Nadine Silva Publication of the Year: AMUST Lifetime Achievement Award: Antoine Kazzi OAM – El Telegraph
Since our SunRice campaign launched during Lunar New Year, we’ve had lots of interest from clients and prospects. They’re particularly interested about IDENTITY Communication’s view on multicultural talent in creative.
I always start with this story…
“Box Hill is a well-known Chinese suburb. There are all Chinese billboards on the street and 9 out 10 are Asian faces. You see more international (non-Chinese) people in Shanghai than here” Weibo post.
It came up in branding work for a large retail client earlier this year. During the insight and discovery phase, this nugget unlocked a crucial insight that had us reassessing our recommendation. Surely, you’d expect Chinese in Australia to love being in an area that is predominantly Chinese, right?
Maybe not…
In higher education, particularly in courses which Chinese international students are the predominant group enrolled, these students are finding that too much of a good thing might not be good after all. Some are craving more diversity in their class and express an interest to mix outside of their group to get a more authentic experience of Australia and Australian education.
That’s lead us to this insight:
Being lumped in with people like you all the time is comforting at first, but before long, you want to explore and experience more of Australia. After all, isn’t that why migrants and international students come to a sunburnt country?
But how should we treat these audiences in multicultural creative? Is it to make sure everyone is represented, like below?
But what if you miss one group? Awkward. And how do you avoid producing creatives that come across as tokenistic?
Take a look at NAB’s Life – More Than Money campaign above. A well told story that focuses on a universal truth. We all love and want success for our children, don’t we? So let’s tell that story from one perspective, in this case, it’s an Asian-Australian one.
The single-minded focus makes this creative more powerful, more compelling. It’s one of my favourite ads of recent years.
Context is important, too. Instead of being a United Nations of representation, bringing it back to what’s authentic and real.
The Rice Breaker, our campaign for SunRice, depicted a uniquely migrant experience of inviting your neighbour to dinner for the first time.
It’s real, it doesn’t feel tonkenistic.
Migrants don’t live in their own bubble so we should find ways to represent that in creative.
How does that compare with multicultural creative you’ve seen lately? Where does it fit in the tokenistic/cliche to authentic scale? Think about the Chinese New Year creative you’ve seen lately… red and gold, 8’s, papercut pigs, smiling Chinese family in traditional costume, much?
Oh, and make sure this more inclusive approach is reflected in your media investment. Your media plan should use all relevant touch points; a ‘mainstream’ channel like Out of Home might be just perfect to extend your campaign reach.
I’m glad IDENTITY’s work has inspired and stirred interest. Really looking forward to seeing great creative that genuinely reflects modern Australia.
Seen any other great work lately? Share it with us in the comments.
